The earth beneath her squishes as she crawls, the cold mud curling between her fingers, painting her extremities tar black. The grass is long and sharp and damp with dew; it slices relentlessly at her face and neck. Within minutes, one of her cheeks is bleeding and she is soaked all the way through to her undergarments. Ignoring the mud and the wet and the sting on her cheek, she kneels for a moment to scan the tree line a hundred meters ahead, and then glances over her shoulder. Still no sign of Germans. Good. She lowers herself back onto her hands, wishing she’d worn trousers, realizing now what a pointless vanity it was to want to look nice for Jakob.
As she sloshes her way across the meadow, she thinks of her parents, and the meal they’d shared the night before she left. Her mother had prepared boiled pierogi stuffed with mushrooms and cabbage, Bella’s favorite, which she and her father had devoured. Gustava, however, had barely touched the food on her plate. Bella’s chest tightens as she pictures her mother with an uneaten pierogi before her. She’d always been thin, but since the Germans arrived she’d grown gaunt. Bella had blamed it on the stress of war, and it had pained her to leave, seeing her mother so frail. She recalls how, the following day, as she boarded Tomek’s wagon, she glanced up at the flat and saw her parents standing at the window—her father with an arm wrapped around her mother’s slight frame, her mother with her palms pressed up against the glass. All she could make out were their silhouettes, but she could tell from the way Gustava’s shoulders shook that she was crying. She’d wanted badly to wave, to leave her parents with a smile that said she’d be fine, she’d be back, not to worry. But Witolda Boulevard was crawling with Wehrmacht; she couldn’t risk revealing her departure with a wave. Instead she turned away, pulled the wagon’s door flap aside, and climbed in.
Bella winces as her knee strikes something hard, a rock. She breathes through the pain and crawls on, realizing just how quickly the events of the past two weeks have unfolded. Jakob’s departure, the German invasion, the letter, the arrangement with Tomek. She’d been frantic when she left Radom, thinking solely of getting to Lvov to be with Jakob. But what about her parents? Will they be all right on their own? What if something happens to them while she’s away? How will she help them? What if something happens to her? What if she never makes it to Lvov? Stop, she scolds. You will be fine. Your parents will be fine. She recites the sentiment over and over again, until the possibility of any other scenario is removed from her consciousness.
Bella tries to listen for signs of danger as she crawls, but her ears are filled with the thunder of her pulse. She’d have never guessed that walking on her hands and knees would require such work. Everything is heavy: her arms, her legs, her head. It’s as if she’s anchored to the earth, weighed down by her appendages, by her countless layers of clothing, by Jakob’s camera, by the muscle that clings to her bones and the sweat that coats her skin despite the morning chill. Her joints hurt, every one of them, her hips, her elbows, her knees, her knuckles; they grow stiffer by the minute. Damn the mud. Pausing, she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand and peers over the tips of the grass; she’s halfway to the tree line. Fifty meters to go. You’re nearly there, she tells herself, resisting the urge to lie down for a few minutes, to rest. Can’t stop now. Rest when you reach the forest.
Focusing on the cadence of her breath—two beats in through her nose, three beats out through her mouth—Bella is lost in delirious rhythm when a sharp crack catapults through the morning sky, splintering the silence. She drops quickly to her stomach and flattens her body to the ground, shielding the back of her head with her hands. There is no mistaking what the sound was. A gunshot. Would there be another? Where had it come from? Are they onto her? She waits, every muscle in her body flexed, contemplating what to do—run? Or remain hidden? Her instinct tells her to play dead. And so she lies, her nose a centimeter from the mud, breathing in the smell of fear and wet earth, counting the seconds as they pass. A minute ticks by, then two as she listens, straining, the meadow playing tricks on her—was that the wind rustling the grass? Or was it footsteps?
Finally, when she can’t stand it any longer, Bella presses her palms into the mud and, in slow motion, lifts her torso. Through the grass, she scans the horizon. From what she can see, it’s clear. Maybe the shot had sounded closer than it was. Ignoring the likelihood that it had come from the direction in which she is headed, she starts crawling again, faster now, her muscles no longer heavy with fatigue but spiked with a terrifying sense of urgency.
You can do this. You’re not far. Just be there when I arrive, Jakob. At the address you sent. Wait for me. With each breath, she repeats the words. Please, Jakob. Just be there.
SEPTEMBER 12, 1939—BATTLE OF LVOV: The battle for control of the city begins with clashes between Polish and surrounding German forces, which greatly outnumber the Poles in both infantry and weaponry. The Poles sustain nearly two weeks of ground fighting, shelling, and bombing by the Luftwaffe.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1939: The Soviet Union cancels all pacts with Poland and invades the country from the east. The Red Army begins marching at full tilt toward Lvov. The Poles push back, but by the nineteenth of September, the Soviets and the Germans have the city surrounded.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mila
Radom, Poland ~ September 20, 1939
The moment Mila opens her eyes she can sense it—something isn’t right. The apartment is too still, too quiet. Taking a sharp breath, she sits up, her spine straight. Felicia. She climbs out of bed and hurries barefoot down the hall to the nursery.
The door swings open without a sound and Mila blinks into the darkness, realizing that she’d forgotten to check the clock. She pads silently to the window, and as she draws the thick damask curtain aside, a shaft of soft, powdery light fills the room. It must be dawn. Through the wooden bars of Felicia’s crib she can vaguely make out the lump of a silhouette. She tiptoes to the crib rail.
Felicia lies on her side, motionless, her face obscured by the pink koc draped over her ear. Mila reaches down, lifts the small cotton blanket, and rests her palm gently on the back of Felicia’s head, waiting intently for a breath, a rustle, anything. Why is it, Mila wonders, that even when her daughter is sleeping, she worries that something dreadful has happened to her? Finally, Felicia flinches, sighs, and rolls to her other side; within seconds, she is still again. Mila exhales. She slips out of the room, leaving the door ajar.
Running her fingers along the wall, she makes her way quietly to the kitchen, glancing at the clock at the end of the hallway. It’s just before six in the morning.
“Dorota?” Mila calls softly. On most mornings, she awakens to the whistle of the kettle as Dorota prepares her tea. But it’s still early. Dorota, who stays during the week in the small maid’s quarters off the kitchen, doesn’t typically start her day until six-thirty. She must be asleep.
“Dorota?” Mila calls again, knowing she shouldn’t wake her, but she can’t shake the sensation that something is wrong. Perhaps, Mila rationalizes, she’s still adjusting to the feeling of waking up without Selim by her side. It’s been nearly two weeks since her husband, along with Genek, Jakob, and Adam, was sent off to Lvov to join the Polish Army. Selim promised he would write as soon as he arrived, but she hasn’t received a letter yet.